For the heck of it, I’ve decided to post some random thoughts I’d saved in a draft e-mail to the pastor of the church I’ve been going to for some time.

Tim’s a really interesting & thought-provoking guy & has been very gracious about allowing me to go to him to vent, sound-off, complain, muddle-my-way-through various things.

One of the things he’s been teaching about Sundays is the idea of vulnerability. I’m not going to attempt to explain the idea right now, but as I was glancing over the draft e-mail debating whether to keep any & send or just trash the whole thing, the thought came that maybe I should just toss it out to a wider audience. I know some will vehemently disagree with some of the thoughts, some will wonder what crazy pill I took, but I dunno .. if any of it gets anyone to thinking, and if it makes me take down a little of the wall … well … what’s the worst that could happen? (don’t answer that!)

I realize this is out of context for my few readers, but to attempt to share lessons that have started these lines of thinking would take far too long & I’d do far too poor a job. Enough stalling! random thoughts of mine relating to spirituality & religion ….

How do you move out of living from fear?If one of my fears is being destitute, how do I turn that around? Some would say “trust in God”, trust that He’ll work it out, that He’ll care for you … but it seems to me that’s not the way things work. People with faith have bad things happen too. Being Christian doesn’t give immunity to poverty or sickness or awful, evil things. So the idea of trusting that God will provide doesn’t seem “right” to me. I can “get” the concept of needing to have faith that God will give you the *strength* to get through whatever may come – is*that* it? The idea that whatever comes our way, we’ve been given the ability to “handle” it?

Which speaks to another big fear of mine – what if I *can’t* handle it? This idea of trials only making us stronger doesn’t always feel true to me. There’s way too many people in the world who, out of trials and fear and stress and crappy things happening have *not* become stronger. They numb themselves, lose a grip on reality, become broken, pay the hurt and pain forward … I can see all kinds of ways *I’ve* done that already, so it’s not true that pain makes us stronger …

Coming back to that idea of “God will provide” ….. mulling over the messages I’d been taught in Sunday school & that I see in many trappings of organized religion I was angered at realizing how much more guilt the church lays on, how much it can contribute to a person thinking they’re NOT good enough…. I was thinking about the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, the “birds of the air” passage & other lessons that teach “trust in God and no harm will come to you” – um yeah, right! The message that if you pray hard enough, believe enough, trust in Him, have enough faith, (fill in your own blank here!), He will keep bad things from you/keep you from bad things …… and it’s just not true!

God doesn’t stop out-of-control cars or drunk drivers, keep animals from attacking, or cancer from destroying, or children being beaten or women being raped. If you surrender to him you might not be rich in the world’s ways, but you won’t starve either is a popular idea I’ve seen in Christians – again, it’s NOT true! …. that’s just not the way it works! why do so many “Christians” spend so much time teaching these messages about trusting God to “take care of u”s & that belief in Him means no harm will come to us?

How in the world was I to make sense out of the things that happened in my life, both as an innocent child as as a “believer”? Did they happen because I didn’t pray right? my faith wasn’t strong enough? I was too sinful? I “deserved” punishment? I’d failed to forgive someone? Didn’t understand what forgiveness meant? Why had God not protected me? Why does He allow such suffering? The death of children moves me to tears when I don’t even know them or thir families. The plight of millions of starving people could push me over the brink of insanity if I let it. There is so much WRONG in the world … to lay it at the feet of lack of faith? No, I don’t think so.

I *can* understand (I think) someone being in a place of it not mattering (mmm, no, that’s not quite the right phrasing) what happens and I *think* that’s what Tim is getting at when he spoke about dying to the old life, the old creation vs new, but I totally don’t get how to get there. It’s definitely tied up/to contentment and peace …

Thanks AJ & Val for commenting on the first variation of the shawl. I love the colours of that yarn AJ & agree it could make a really nice scarf, but in the end I decided the vertical striping effect wasn’t going to work with *this* particular project.

Other stuff …. this week is March Break, but unfortunately it seems most of the neighbour kids are in camps or daycare so The Child is lacking for playmates. Thankfully it’s been sunny enough to kick errr send him outside the last couple days for chunks of time. He’s certainly happy enough for the latest dumping of snow. Me, I am very very very tired of it!

The job hunt is going spectacularly UNwell. That right there is probably the biggest *real* reason for lack of updates. *sigh*